Evanoff: New I-269 corridor is a game changer for Millington, Memphis and the region

If the population swells in Millington over the next decade, the families are probably coming out of Memphis. What's the key? It's an artery named Interstate 269. The highway starts in Millington.

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“Since the law enforcement committee has been so quiet on this issue as long as me and Commissioner (Eddie) Jones have been working on this deal, I don’t think it should be heard under law enforcement,” Commissioner Terry Roland said Wednesday.(Photo: Brandon Dill/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo

MILLINGTON, Tenn. – Over the next decade, lots of people might find jobs in this old U.S. Navy town, or move here, up in the northern tier of Shelby County, though hardly anyone today sees economic opportunity in 11,000-population Millington.

Yet this town holds a key to its future, a key that could trouble Memphians.

If the population swells here, the families are probably coming out of Memphis. What's the key? It's an artery named Tennessee Highway 385. It starts here. And if you think Memphis and Shelby County are too crowded, a reason perhaps for the sewer-tap moratorium enacted last year outside Memphis' city limits, look at all the open land astride the highway running out of Millington.

Cars can cruise at interstate speed mile after scenic mile, passing woodlots, cotton and soybean fields, the occasional river bottom, a distant silo. Then the road curves back on itself, flies along the pretty wooded countryside to a point well south of Millington near Southaven, Mississippi.

Free of any stop lights, the entire road runs smooth and fast, four well-cambered lanes divided by a grassy median. Planners label this highway the Interstate 269 corridor. It is finished except the last few miles joining Interstate 55 near Southaven. Once complete this fall, I-269 will race along the clock dial from 12 to 6, tracing a 60-mile half loop through two states, four counties and seven municipalities, none of which are named Memphis.

Suburban interstate

Although the entire half-loop is inside metropolitan Memphis, not a single mile of I-269 is inside the Memphis city limits. It’s a suburban interstate, the first important Memphis highway to ever bypass Memphis. Instead, the interstate threads together a string of towns long regarded as quiet bedroom communities to the big city.

With Memphis proper mired in an economic corner — the city lacks the large land parcels big new plants need, says the Boyette economic development study delivered in August to the Greater Memphis Chamber — the I-269 corridor acts like a beacon.

Planners estimate thousands of potential industrial and office-campus acres could be made available in the vast rural spaces along the new interstate corridor. Few towns are as keen to make good on this moment as Millington.

“We have shovel-ready land,” said Terry Roland, the Millington Area Chamber of Commerce executive director. “We have a lot of it.”

Millington vs. Memphis?

Sure, this might sound like the upstart taking on the big city.

Here’s Memphis — finances are strained, the tax base vulnerable. Yet city leaders have proven reluctant to reclaim empty industrial sites like the former Firestone property. And here’s Millington, where two generations of aviators and sailors trained for sea duty, until the Cold War ended and the military cut back in the 1990s.

Twenty-five years later, Millington has the Navy’s human resources department, but that’s half the 15,000 people the base had as a training and naval air station. Millington is still trying to climb back. Courtesy of highway planners, its trek eased.

The community sits 17 miles from I-269’s interchange at Interstate 40, America’s east-west freight artery, and about 50 miles via I-269 from Interstate 22, the southeast route to Birmingham and then Atlanta. So this looks like us and them — Millington vs. Memphis.

However, Roland, the former Shelby County Commissioner, doesn’t see conflict. Neither does Ralph Moore. A former Georgia mayor, Moore heads a coordinating agency named the Memphis Area Association of Governments. He looks at Memphis as part of a region. He said he sees a divided region.

“We operate in silos and the silos are thick, and when the silos are thick, no one can see anyone else, no one can hear anyone else,” Moore said. "We need to stop believing if it comes to you, it’s a defeat for me.”

Skills, jobs

Traffic moves along Holmes Road east of Horn Lake Road, an area that was approved to be widened in the fiscal 2011 budget by former interim county mayor Joe Ford.(Photo: Nikki Boertman)

Last year, an economic study ordered by Moore’s agency made several stark conclusions:

Notes the study: “There is a plethora of planning, economic development, and labor force development entities in the region. Certainly Memphis and Shelby County have tried to bring many groups and objectives under one or two umbrellas ... But there is still little coordination with surrounding counties and municipalities on regional economic development. Further, there is competition for limited resources among groups that are targeting similar business investments.”

An idea peeks out in this stark picture. Memphis leadership has under-performed. This point has echoed around the city since the slow recovery from the 2008 recession.

“We have a cumbersome process for incentives while Mississippi is a few phone calls. We have not had a new industrial development since 2007,’’ commercial real estate executive Larry Jensen, a former Memphis chamber president, wrote in an email. “Holmes Road, where there is land, remains a two lane road ... and Lamar & Shelby Drive a nightmare intersection. Mississippi builds roads and they come. Wake up Shelby County!"

People here, jobs there

A project to widen and improve Lamar Avenue finished outside the money in the inaugural federal FASTLANE grants.

Jensen, chief executive of Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors, wrote this note in 2016. Since then, grants were secured to improve the Lamar Avenue truck route. A slow-moving entity named the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce was formed to match capable workers and open jobs.

And this year FedEx executive Richard Smith, as the new chairman of the Greater Memphis Chamber, a business group whose members are located primarily in Memphis and Shelby County, set out to reform incentive and recruiting procedures at EDGE, the economic development arm of Memphis and Shelby County governments.

What didn’t change? The workforce. It lives chiefly in Memphis, while the potential industrial land is chiefly in the I-269 corridor. Those points aren’t lost on office and manufacturing companies that consider moving here, Moore said.

“Before Memphis can be looked at, the region has to be looked at," Moore said.

Fend off suburbs

With its universities, hospitals, airport, museums, churches, zoo, symphony orchestra, ballet, live theaters, professional sports, philanthropies and parks, Memphis proper is regarded as the brightly lit intellectual center for over 100 miles in any direction. Most of these bright lights are called non-profits. They pay no property tax.

So when city officials abruptly imposed a sewer-tap moratorium last year on new developments outside the city limits, the decision was widely regarded outside Memphis as a move to preserve the city tax base by pushing growth into the city while fending off the suburbs.

“Everyone thinks they’re trying to cut off development,” said Roland, who ran unsuccessfully for Shelby County mayor in the Republican primary in May.

Memphis Public Works Division director Robert Knecht said the moratorium could prevent overflows in the wastewater plants, and noted the city would honor connection agreements already in place on future suburban developments. Meanwhile, Memphis City Councilman Frank Colvett Jr., head of the council's Planning & Zoning Committee, has urged Shelby County to pay for sewer service outside the city limits.

Just how this will unfold isn’t clear. Many officials are not alarmed.

In Bartlett, a city of 60,000 population (and not, incidentally, in the I-269 corridor), officials figure new holding tanks could accompany future developments. These tanks could release wastewater into the Memphis treatment system late at night when use falls citywide and the system isn’t in danger of overflowing.

“If anything it’s just causing things to slow down a little bit,” John Todd, Bartlett Chamber of Commerce economic development manager, said about the moratorium.

What's next?

Roland said he thinks the moratorium could push growth into the I-269 corridor and just beyond it.

Already plans are afoot for 200 new homes north of Millington. He figures more developers will build houses and commercial strips in places that have easy access to the new interstate and operate wastewater plants.

This could benefit cities in the metro area such as Tunica, Mississippi, and Covington, Tennessee. It could also benefit Millington. It has its own wastewater plant.

Of these cities, Roland prefers his. He said Memphis and Shelby County residents should too. Why? Taxes.

Part of the tax revenue raised in Millington flows to Shelby County. But the new interstate runs through four counties. If the moratorium triggers developments in DeSoto, Fayette or Marshall counties, the tax revenue will go to those counties rather than Shelby.

For now, Roland is confident of his city's odds.

'Our time'

There’s a new shopping center. Its features include the popular Memphis restaurant Huey's. Hundreds of sailors are discharged into civilian life every year. And the Navy handed over an 8,000-foot runway airport surrounded by 2,000 undeveloped acres, much of it available for recreation, offices and industrial uses.

While Memphis has never restored the old Firestone site, a tire factory closed in 1983, Millington reclaimed 103 acres for industrial use, and did it this year, helped by detailed Navy studies showing the location of the chemical plume 70 feet below ground.

No one has spoken of running Memphis city bus routes the dozen miles to Millington, although Roland has urged highway officials to build the final leg of I-269 south from Millington into Memphis at I-40 near Downtown. He said Memphians could then easily commute to the interstate corridor's new jobs.

Five years ago, the Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization released a report that recommended locals officials create a I-269 corridor master plan and “form a corridor alliance and brand it.” So far an alliance hasn't emerged, although Millington has moved ahead.

"We think it's our time to really grow," Roland said.

Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com and (901) 529-2292.